Getting Around

Kennedy Expressway to reopen all downtown lanes this week, but construction will linger until spring

December 07, 2009|By Jon Hilkevitch

An especially wicked traffic bottleneck should start to clear later this week on the busy downtown stretch of the Kennedy Expressway, when three newly constructed ramps and one lane in each direction are set to reopen.

It's a cheerful holiday season construction update for commuters who have complained since summer of traffic being affected clear back to the Edens Expressway, which created its own logjam for drivers a year ago when that highway was resurfaced through the northern suburbs.

Adding to the pain, the Kennedy ramp reconstruction project is months behind schedule and running $3 million over its $9.3 million budget, according to the Illinois Department of Transportation. The original completion date was Nov. 15, but work will not wrap up until spring, officials said.

The low point was reached on Oct. 14 when pavement near Adams Street erupted due to a construction mishap in an abandoned freight tunnel below. Consequently, two highway lanes were shut down for most of the day on the section of the Kennedy that handles more than 300,000 vehicles daily.

But now, the semi-completion of Kennedy work to improve flow and reduce accidents means that all Loop-area entrances and exits will be open outbound, or westbound, from roughly the Eisenhower Expressway (Interstate Highway 290) Circle Interchange to the Hubbard's Cave tunnel.

It marks a welcome expansion of access points to the highway for drivers heading out of downtown.

Specifically, the westbound Kennedy entrance ramps at Jackson Boulevard and Adams Street and the inbound, or eastbound, entrance at Madison Street are scheduled to reopen by Friday, weather permitting, according to IDOT. In addition, all four lanes in each direction will be back in service by week's end with the return of the left lane adjacent to the median from Van Buren to Lake streets, officials said.

Meanwhile, three eastbound exit ramps -- at Adams, Jackson and Monroe Street -- will remain closed for reconstruction through winter, IDOT said, adding that those ramps are scheduled to open in spring.

Instead of encountering three eastbound exit ramps in succession, when the work is completed, drivers will have the option to use a single ramp to leave the Kennedy; the ramp then will split into individual exits at Adams and Jackson. Monroe will remain separate.

Similarly, the redesign of the Kennedy's center-entrance "suicide-merge" ramps was intended to boost safety by extending the merge pattern into traffic on the Kennedy, giving drivers more time and better sight lines to enter the expressway, officials said.

About a half-dozen of the originally 20-plus Kennedy ramps west of the Loop, some spaced as close as a block apart, have been eliminated in the last five years.

"It gave us more room to provide longer tapers and longer ramps to allow vehicles to merge into traffic with longer gaps to enter," Tyszkiewicz said.

Even with safety improvements introduced in the last five years, there still is at least one accident each day on the roughly mile-long section of the expressway, IDOT officials said.

"The project really was necessary to alleviate what probably was the most substantial safety problem we had on our interstate system in regard to the number of crashes," said Tom Murtha, a senior planner with the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning.

The easing of congestion could not come soon enough for drivers.

Attorney Richard Paull has resorted to trying different ways to work from his home in Highland Park to the Cook County courthouse at 26th Street and California Avenue.

"The Kennedy has backed up worse than usual in the morning from the Loop to the Edens Junction since shortly after the project began," Paull said. "It was noticeable from the moment the project started, and it forced me out of my regular commuting routine."

Murtha, who has created computerized congestion scans of Chicago-area expressways (see cmap.illinois.gov/scans), said the Kennedy ramp work may have exacerbated the congestion problem. But it's difficult to quantify because traffic gridlock already was very bad.

"We typically see congestion as far north as Dundee Road or Lake-Cook Road on an average day regardless of this project," Murtha said.